ANALYSIS OF ROCKET BEACON TRANSMISSIONS FOR COMPUTERIZED RECONSTRUCTION OF IONOSPHERIC DENSITIES

Three methods are described to obtain ionospheric electron densities f rom transionospheric. rocket-beacon total electron content (TEC) data. First, when the line-of-sight from a ground receiver to the rocket be acon is tangent to the flight trajectory, the electron concentration c an be obtained by differentiating the TEC with respect to the distance to the rocket. A similar method may be used to obtain the electron-de nsity profile if the layer is horizontally stratified. Second, TEC dat a obtained during chemical release experiments may be interpreted with the aid of physical models of the disturbed ionosphere to yield spati al maps of the modified regions. Third, computerized tomography (CT) c an be used to analyze TEC data obtained along a chain of ground-based receivers aligned along the plane of the rocket trajectory. CT analysi s of TEC data is used to reconstruct a two-dimensional image of a simu lated equatorial plume. TEC data is computed for a linear chain of nin e receivers with adjacent spacings of either 100 or 200 km. The simula tion data are analyzed to provide an F region reconstruction on a grid with 15 x 15 km pixels. Ionospheric rocket tomography may also be app lied to rocket-assisted measurements of amplitude and phase scintillat ions and airglow intensities.